NEW DELHI: For Twitter, India is an important market and one of its fastest growing, the global chief operating officer of the microblogging platform told ET.

“We see every day how India’s rapidly developing economy and diverse culture are influencing the region and the world. Indian brands are central to that impact, through live commentary, live connections and live conversations,” Adam Bain said. He oversees the company’s business operations as well as its worldwide monetisation efforts and advertising platform. Battling flat user growth globally and key senior leadership exits, the company is betting on markets like India to drive business and growth.

While announcing its quarterly results last week, Twitter said its average monthly active user base was 320 million, the same as the previous quarter. The company last month lost four members of its executive leadership team, including the heads of product and engineering.

The company reported a 48% jump in fourth-quarter revenue, with markets outside the US recording faster growth. “With 79% of our user base outside the US, we’re focused on growing our international sales which grew 69% in 2015 (faster than the global sales growth of 58%),” said Parminder Singh, managing director for Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East and North Africa.

While Twitter’s US revenue totaled $463 million in the past quarter, an increase of 47% year, international revenue rose 51% to $247 million.

“India is the growth engine for Twitter in Asia and our fastest growing region in Asia Pacific within a year of having a team here. We have heads of state like Prime Minister Modi who is now the second-most followed politician in the world,” Singh said. “We recently did a survey of the mass affluent segment in India, and 87% of them use Twitter in India. There’s a cross section of events that people post about. The cricket World Cup saw 1.4 billion impressions on Twitter last year. 80% of the Indian cricket team squad for world T20 are already active on Twitter. And big festive moments like Diwali trend on Twitter.”

Singh said the company is betting on the revenue potential of a market like India where over a billion dollars are being invested on digital ad spends.